Inside view: Building a new life in western Ukraine

Forty-one-year-old Oleksandr Bosenko knew it was time to leave Donetsk, when last autumn the residential district where he lived with his family near the city airport came under heavy shelling.

“It was too dangerous to stay there any longer. I had to think of the safety of my children,” Bosenko said.

He packed his wife and two kids into the car, and together they fled first to Kharkiv and then to the Lviv region, in the western part of the country.

His elderly parents decided to stay in Donetsk to take care of the family house and Bosenko’s once flourishing restaurant business.

“When we just moved to Lviv, it was very hard emotionally,” he said adding that it is difficult to leave your home town and come to a new place where you have no relatives and do not know anyone.

Bosenko is one of more than a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine who are trying to make a new life.

IDP Figures

The total number of internally displaced people across Ukraine is over 1.4 million, according to the UNHCR figures as of the end of July 2015. There are 9.800 IDPs registered in the Lviv region, including 7461 from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to the Social Protection Department in Lviv.

In Lviv, Bosenko met other people who like him were forced to leave their homes.

“We decided to organize something to help each other,” Bosenko said explaining how they set up the non-governmental organization “Ukraine - Path of Unity”.

Their first initiative was to supply clothing with the help of a friend in Italy. Later a local church provided their support to organize collections.

Children playing during the Unity Football Cup.

The NGO’s work is not limited only to charity. They organize different events such as football competition for children and art exhibitions by artists from Donetsk, Luhansk and Lviv.

“We try to unite people regardless of what region they come from,” Bosenko said. He also said, he hopes that initiatives such as Unity Football Cup will make it easier for children to make friends.

Connecting to the local community

Within its mandate, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) pays special attention to the situation of IDPs in Ukraine.

“It is sad to see how these people are struggling after they had to leave behind all they had and adapt to a new life in a different place,” the Head of the SMM office in Lviv region, Maciej Lang, said.

The Mission’s task of closely monitoring the situation with people who arrived from eastern Ukraine means that it has first-hand information about their needs. The monitors do so by regularly meeting with various groups: activists who represent internally displaced persons; NGOs helping them, representatives of international organizations providing them with assistance and the internally displaced people themselves.

While gathering information on the situation of the internally displaced persons and the impact of displacement on local communities, the SMM looks into specific issues such as possible challenges in local integration; whether there are provisions to have access to information on protection concerns of the IDPs, relations with hosting communities, accommodation as well as employment opportunities.

To identify protection needs of different groups of internally displaced persons, along with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the SMM also uses a practical guidebook, developed in 2013 by the OSCE and UNHCR, called the Protection Checklist as a reference tool. It was also used in the developing of the SMM’s Thematic Report on Internal displacement in Ukraine.

OSCE Resource

The Protection Checklist is intended to help field staff recognize the vulnerabilities of displaced populations and take action with in co-operation with specialized humanitarian agencies like the UNHCR.

It was during one of the SMM meetings that the monitors established contacts with the group of Bosnenko and other NGOs such as "East and West together" and "Crimea SOS”.

Another group the monitors met recently was a community of foreign students who used to study in eastern Ukraine.

Knowing about problems and difficulties the internally displaced persons are facing puts the OSCE SMM in a good position to convey their message to the authorities as the monitors work in close contact with government agencies and are able to facilitate dialogue between the parties.

In addition, the SMM closely coordinates with the international organizations assisting the internally displaced persons. The monitors act as facilitators passing information about the needs of internally displaced persons and problems they are facing to humanitarian agencies and to the local administration.

Efforts to help internally displaced persons

The 2014 agreement on co-ordination and information sharing between the OSCE SMM and UNHCR Regional Representative for Ukraine

SMM works with Caritas, UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine; the International Committee of the Red Cross, OCHA and others

“During meetings with the local authorities, we put important questions concerning living conditions and social benefits for IDPs,” Maciej Lang explained.

Foreign students at a crossroads

Twenty-seven-year-old Immanuel Raj from India is settling well into his life as a student at the Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University after having moved here from Luhansk last September. He was in his third year of studies when the conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine. Like many of his fellow international students he had to flee from Luhansk.

“The representatives of the Indian embassy evacuated us and other students, and sent us back home. Over the summer, we were told to choose a university in the western regions to be transferred there,” Raj said adding that he chose the Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University.

Prabhat Prakash Narayan, a representative of the Indian students’ community in Ivano-Frankivsk, meeting members of a team from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.

Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University

There are more than 800 international students at the university. The largest group is from India with 350 people. There are also 190 from Ghana, 180 from Nigeria and 103 students from Poland.

“I love Ivano-Frankivsk for the hospitality of its people, the University has low tuition fees, and importantly, high standards of education,” he said.

“It’s a pity that people had to leave their place of study because of threat to their safety. But we are glad to see that these international students are settling in well in western Ukraine”, said Paola Maieli, monitor of the SMM office in Ivano-Frankivsk.

According to Dmytro Solomchak, the Head of the Department for Assisting Foreign Students, the university provides all necessary support to newcomers and he is glad to see that they are coping well.

“The teaching is conducted in English. When it comes to speaking to the people of Ivano-Frankivsk, they can always use Russian, which they studied before,” Solomchak said noting the university offered Russian classes to students from Jordan who opted for teaching in Russian.

He also added that those wishing to learn Ukrainian can sign up for daily language courses available to them.

Representatives of the student community in Ivano-Frankivsk from Ghana shared similar stories about getting used to their new life. A student from Nigeria, Amadi Humphrey, said that he and his friends feel comfortable there and in case they have any problems they can contact the local police, who offer them full support.

Some of the students have even invited their families to visit them in Ivano-Frankivsk and are looking forward to telling them about their new home and to showing them around the city.